Obama Orders Classification Review

The White House ordered a bow-to-stern review of the government's policies for controlling classified and so-called "sensitive, but unclassified" information yesterday, a step that's likely to end the Bush-era preference for keeping thusly designated data private. Attorney General Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano, the Department of
Homeland Security secretary, will lead the review, along with a new
task force to be staffed by officials from several government
departments and independent agencies. President Obama wants to create a
National Declassification Center that would speed adjudication of
disputes over classified information, and, in a nod to intelligence
reform, wants a government-wide assessment of how classified
information is controlled, marked, disseminated and protected. Dozens
of classified designations protect hundreds of different channels and
systems for processing and disseminating classified data, and the
result is a patchwork of rules, regulations and often confusing
processes. Policy makers at all levels have complained that the current
system of classification overprotects output and discourages
information sharing.

A presidential memo orders the task force to jusitfy information
categories that ought to be withheld, rather than asking them to
justify why releasing them to the public would be harmful.

The memo also seeks an "[a]ppropriate prohibition of reclassification
of material that has been declassified and released to the public under
proper authority," as authorities reclassified tens of thousands of
previously declassified documents during the Bush administration.